VK4KW CQ WW WPX SSB 2011

Thankfully, the weather was kind to us - some dark clouds gathered on Sunday but they scampered away without doing anything moist.

The station had been dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century (not yet into the 21st century though!) with the addition of a rotator for 15m the week prior to the contest. We had a bit of rope dangling off the yagi boom previously. It proved to be useful as our QSO tally increased over the 2010 effort as a consequence - and it won't all be attributable to the band conditions I think. 20m and 10m still don't have rotators, so two items stand-out as requiring some work prior to the next contest! Various other improvements were implemented - and more are planned for later in the year.

80m was not well utilised by most, so 40m up to 10m bore the brunt of the contest traffic. Propagation was considered to be "quite good" from VK4 - makes a change for it to align with a contest! The openings on 10m were impressive and hopefully a sign of good things to come in the future.

The weekend's contest efforts consumed:

Two cartons of beer (not sure what everyone else had though...)

Several cans of coke

Two band aids

One can of fly repellant (maybe I should take a shower??)

One packet of cigarettes - (give up smoking Dave!!) 8-)

Half a cow - minced and sliced varieties

One large tray of rissoles

One large bag of spuds

Six toilet rolls!! No reflection on my cooking I hope!!!

Six litres of milk

Half a large box of teabags

One jar of coffee

Money collected within the profanity jar: Almost enough $$$ to retire on..... 8-)

Fred Rollo n0ibd.I made a contact with 9n7md on nov11-19-11 at 2:25 Z, on 17 mertes . It was a ssb contact that was logged incorectly. It was logged as a contact with n0 (j) bd . An J rather than an I. n0jbdrather than n0ibd. There is no n0jbd listed in the qrz database. Please make this correction.I thank you for your help and for making the contact possable.Respectfully, Fred Rollo n0ibd